This Mother board has only two PCI slots and already has a Gig Ethernet built in. It's plugged into a Gig switch.At this point I don't see multiple additional TV's as part of my system,though home security, Voip, and X-10 are high on the list.I thought a single hybrid server would fit my needs best.

I have read about external nic's and internal nic's, and modems as nic's...?It all seems very confusing.Would the second nic require me to wire a duplicate cat-5 network.What traffic would flow on each network.

I'm sure all this has been discussed at length, but I can’t find any of the threads.

One additional comment:I downloaded the software at work. Finished late one night.Couldn't wait to get home and try the install.We work in a Network support shop and we have lots of spare machines around.So I stuck the i386 DVD version of the software in a new DELL OPTIPLEX.And went through a quick install just to familiarize my self.Then I shut the system down and went home.Imagine my chagrin when I came in the next evening shift and found out the box had reset instead of going completely down.... It only took our guys a short while the next morning to find out why no one could get on the network, because that’s what we do.My linuxmce was handing out IP addresses much quicker than the Remote DHCP server could.It seems that it would be a good thing to mention that by defaultlinuxmce will install DHCP and provide address to its own private non-routed subnet and it might be a good question to ask during the install: Do you want DHCP service?Well only a little damage done and most of that to my ego.

Looks like this is going to be a fun project and I can hardly wait to get it all up and running.